Saturday, July 01, 2006

Torture in Chicago. Torture in Iraq

Jon Burge was dismissed from the Chicago Police force in 1989 but he has never been charged with a crime. No charges agaisnt him and over 20 other police officers despite a mountain of evidence that indicates Burge and others should be prosecuted for the Abu Ghraib like torture of dozens of African American citizens. The total of those tortured is 192 and growing. What's happended in Iraq should not be so shocking. Torture in America's rape rooms has been common fare.

Burge learned how to torture in Vietnam. He taught many other police officers the tricks of his trade. There are over 20 other police officers accused of torture. Those soldiers and contractors in Iraq who have learned to torture, rape, shoot first and ask questions later will be coming back from Iraq someday. They will bring what they have learned to American law enforcement as Burge did.

Mayor Daley was Involved

Does Chicago (America) have a mayor who is hiding his involvement in the cover-up of the systematic torture by Chicago Police of almost 200 African American citizens? Why if there are 200 hundred reported cases of torture with evidence has there not been one prosecution?

The states attorney decides what cases to prosecute. Mayor Richard Daley was the States Attorney during the reported torture and he was informed of the torture and evidence of torture. Mayor Richard M. Daley did nothing.

Abu Ghraib is said to be shocking. American troops murdering, torturing, raping and sexually humiliating scores of Iraqi prisoners. How long has this been going on?

Well it’s been going on right here in Chicago for at least 20 years. It is rarely reported in the Chicago News media but has been consistently been reported by the free Chicago Reader which is a hand out paper for locals on upcoming events. John Conroy a staff writer for the reader has pursued this torture scandal for a number of years and it is our only real access to what happened.

John Conroy reports

THE SPECIAL PROSECUTOR'S report on the Chicago police torture scandal is expected to be issued shortly, perhaps in a matter of days. Special prosecutor Edward Egan has uncovered 192 victims (there may well be more) claiming to have been abused by Jon Burge and detectives serving under him from the 1970s into the 1990s, scores of them not identified in any published list. The scale of criminality is immense: hundreds of assaults (most victims were subjected to more than one attack), hundreds of acts of misconduct qualifying as felonies. Some detectives, called to testify in various proceedings, may have committed perjury on five or more occasions in a single case.

The prosecutors and politicians in Chicago have been stalling for the statue of limitations to run out and for time in general. Mayor Daley did nothing during his time as State Attorney from 1981 to 1989. Daley was informed of the torture allegations, photos and evidence.

Now that the statute of limitations has run out many if not all of these crimes, state prosecution is unlikely, though victims’ attorneys hold out hope that federal charges are possible.

Those informed of the torture and those who participated in the torture have gone on to bigger and better things. Apparently torture aficionados like George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld have a lot of friends operating on the local level.

Some of the prosecutors informed of the torture are now judges. One serves on the Illinois Appellate Court. And one is the mayor.

One can compare Sadaam Hussein’s alleged torture rooms with Bush’s documented torture rooms in Iraq and Bush’s documented treatment of prisoners in Texas where he was governor.

In George Bush's America, denial about inmate mistreatment runs similarly rampant. As Texas governor, Bush oversaw the executions of 152 prisoners and thus became the most-killing governor in the history of the United States. Ethnic minorities, many of whom did not have access to proper legal representation, comprised a large percentage of those Bush put to death, and in one particularly egregious example, Bush executed an immigrant who hadn't even seen a consular official from his own country (as is required by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the US was a signatory). Bush's explanation: "Texas did not sign the Vienna Convention, so why should we be subject to it?"

Governor Bush also flouted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by choosing to execute juvenile offenders, a practice shared by only Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Significantly, in 1998 a full 92% of the juvenile offenders on Bush's death row were ethnic minorities.

Conditions inside Texan prisons during Bush's reign were so notorious that federal Judge William Wayne Justice wrote, "Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from such abysmal conditions." n George Bush's America, denial about inmate mistreatment runs similarly rampant. As Texas governor, Bush oversaw the executions of 152 prisoners and thus became the most-killing governor in the history of the United States. Ethnic minorities, many of whom did not have access to proper legal representation, comprised a large percentage of those Bush put to death, and in one particularly egregious example, Bush executed an immigrant who hadn't even seen a consular official from his own country (as is required by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the US was a signatory). Bush's explanation: "Texas did not sign the Vienna Convention, so why should we be subject to it?"

Governor Bush also flouted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by choosing to execute juvenile offenders, a practice shared by only Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Significantly, in 1998 a full 92% of the juvenile offenders on Bush's death row were ethnic minorities.

Conditions inside Texan prisons during Bush's reign were so notorious that federal Judge William Wayne Justice wrote, "Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from such abysmal conditions."

There are 2 million Americans serving time on Prison Planet America. Many of them work as slave labor for corporations, many are black. Who said slavery is over? Maybe it's just got a new face. But let’s get back to Chicago lest we begin to see a worldwide endemic pattern of American injustice.

From the Reader:

Since the first reports of Chicago police torture surfaced a quarter century ago the list has swelled to nearly 200 cases involving dozens of public employees—and still no one has been prosecuted.

I come from the south side. I live in Uptown now. Police harassment was a visible constant then and is constant now here in Uptown.

We have much to look forward to, when our brave fighting men and women…some of whose minds have become warped beyond repair return to the United States and enter into the police forces all over the nation. There will be a new kind of police force in the future too. It will be private security forces, patrolling the borders, being called in to quell disturbances in New Orleans replacing of the National Guard. They will bring their knowledge and perversity learned in Iraq with them, perhaps to your door.

From the Reader

Burge, a south-side native, may have learned to torture in Vietnam, where he served in 1968 and ’69. Veterans of his company have reported that they participated in the electrical torture of Vietcong suspects, shocking them using hand-cranked field telephones.

More than 50 men alleged that they were tortured by Burge and his detectives during Daley’s term as Cook County state’s attorney, from 1981 to 1989. He was put on notice several times, most dramatically in the case of Andrew Wilson. Photographs of Wilson’s stitches, burns, and alligator- clip wounds made compelling evidence in court, underlined by Hyman’s failure to ask if Wilson had given his statement voluntarily. Received copy of letter from Dr. John Raba, who as medical director of Cermak Hospital examined Wilson’s injuries, urging police superintendent Richard Brzeczek to investigate. Brzeczek told Daley he had promised to investigate all cases of police brutality but did not want to jeopardize Wilson’s prosecution and asked for guidance. Daley sent no reply. Mayor of Chicago since 1989.

The Reader article concludes that Patrick (I have always called him Fizzgerald) Fitzgerald offers the only hope of prosecution at the federal level.

If he won't prosecute the Whitehouse and his Republican appointees I suppose there is a chance he would prosecute a Democratic Mayor. But wait! This Democratic Mayor apparenlty voted for George Bush. Mayor Daley refused to endorsee John Kerry. Mayor Daley said that who he voted for in the 2004 presidential election was a private matter. That is absolutely unheard of in Democratic politics in Chicago.

Is that why the Feds under Fitzgerald have given Daley such easy unheard of treatment in their interview of him, allowing him to speak "off the record" with his attorney present in a hiring scandal that Fitzgerald is now investigating?

Don't bet on Fitzgerald going after an ally of Bush. So far he has gone only after his enemies, like Republican governor George Ryan who ended the death penalty in Illinois much to the chagrin of Karl Rove and George Bush.